Chapter Text
Veronica Sawyer is studying forensics in college.
How ironic, she knows. From a life of crime to a life against crime. Well, a couple months of crime, anyways.
Her first month of freshman year has been…uneventful, to say the least. Most of her classes are gen-eds—she doesn’t get into the ‘juicy stuff’ until second semester. Her roommate is rarely around, claiming she’s studying (Veronica knows she’s actually off gallivanting with her girlfriend, but she doesn’t judge.)
Veronica is certainly not lonely, though. In fact, alone time is something that she deeply mourns.
Why? Because she’s got one (and on occasion, three) ghosts following her around. Heather Chandler’s posthumous mission is entirely to patronize Veronica for…everything she does. Kurt and Ram sometimes show up, and that in itself is annoying.
Yet the one thing Heather teases her the most about?
Being single.
“It’s barely been a month, Heather,” the brunette groans, failing to focus on the paper she’s writing on her laptop. The ghost of her high school friend slash bully leans against the back of the chair, one eyebrow raised.
“One month wasted away,” the girl in red replies. “College is about sex, Veronica. None of this stuff…” she gestures to Veronica’s book bag and laptop, “…is important.”
Veronica rolls her eyes. “In my eyes, college is about getting an education.” Giving up on the task at hand, the girl slams her laptop shut and turns to face the demon queen of high school. “You seem awfully disappointed at everything I do, yet you choose to stick around. Why haven’t you found some other miserable girl with emotional baggage to haunt?”
Heather returns the eye roll, before standing up and crossing her arms. “Trust me, if I could, I would. Problem with being dead? You don’t get to choose who you ‘haunt’,” she growls, quoting with her fingers with the last word. “You were the closest living thing to me when I died, so my spirit is eternally linked to you, or whatever.” She steps back and leans against the door. “I am eternally trapped watching your stupid life, even if I don’t choose to project myself in your sight.”
“I’m flattered,” Veronica points out. “Wait, hold on. I was the closest living thing to you? How does that even work?”
“I’m not a fucking afterlife expert,” Heather scoffs. She flips her hand around and inspects her nails, as if they’ve somehow changed since the day she died. “I have absolutely no idea. And I don’t really feel like searching for an answer. All I know is that if someone died, and you were, like, right next to them, they’re stuck eternally haunting you forever.”
Explains why Kurt and Ram show up often. She was the closest person to them when they died.
With a loud, unsatisfying sigh, Heather gives Veronica that infamous death stare. “None of this solves the ever present problem of your singleness,” she spits. “And lack of hookups. You’re wasting your life away, Veronica. Go to a bar, for fuck’s sake! Use a dating app!”
“Not really interested,” Veronica replies, before exhaustedly stalking over to her bed. She belly flops onto the mattress, face on the pillow, letting out a muffled groan. A glance at her phone told her all she needed to know–studying until 3:30 AM is not a productive use of your time.
She hears Heather let out another scoff. “Fine. Enjoy depressingly laying in bed, for all I care. Don’t come to me when you’re looking for guy advice, though.”
And Veronica know’s Heather’s gone when the room suddenly increases in temperature. For some reason, whenever one of the ghosts (god, it still feels so weird to say that) is nearby, the room drops a few degrees. God knows why; Veronica is even less of an afterlife expert than Heather is.
And her exhaustion is yet another reason why she should leave the pondering to another time.
Veronica lazily stumbles back off the bed, slips off her sweater and skirt, and throws on a pair of shorts and an oversized shirt. She buries herself under her comforter and mountains of blankets; her room gets freezing at night. Well, she picked this dorm because it was one of the only campus dorms with air conditioning, but the AC can get a bit much at times.
Better than sleeping in sweat, though.
It takes her longer than normal to fall asleep that night. Her mind is filled with so many emotions at once, like a thousand conversations are happening all at the same time between thousands of tiny Veronicas.
She’s tossing and turning. She just can’t get comfortable, it seems.
She’s getting itchy in tons of places. She has to keep drinking water.
She’s so tired.
Waiting and hoping for the sweet release of sleep.
A sudden chill surrounds her entire body, before a layer of warmth abruptly falls on top of her. Her eyes are closed–she thinks the AC just switched off–but she’s thankful for it.
Because sleep comes easily now.
And when she wakes up she doesn’t even question that a new blanket was now on her bed that wasn’t there when she fell asleep.
_ _ _
Jason Dean believed that everyone gets one life, and that’s it.
He was proven wrong mere seconds after his own demise.
As someone who was so deeply connected to the concept of death, J.D. was bewildered when he opened his eyes to the sight of his own body, charred and broken from the explosive he took himself out with.
Ten seconds ago, he died. Now he’s…just here. Standing next to his own dead body. Standing next to…
Veronica Sawyer.
She is emotionless. Well, she looks that way, but her thoughts say something different.
Wait, her thoughts?
He can hear Veronica’s thoughts.
And they’re all over the place.
I’m free, one side of her brain sighs with relief, while the other wails in pain and anguish. What have I done? Why did I let him do that?
No, he was a terrible human being.
No, he had a heart.
No, this isn’t about him anymore.
It felt like an invasion of privacy. He didn’t choose to read her mind.
What he chose was for it all to be over. What he got was…whatever the hell this is.
And when Veronica Sawyer leaves the football field to reunite with the high school, J.D. is left alone, standing bewildered.
It takes him a few months to figure out how this afterlife thing works.
Veronica is being actively ‘haunted’ by four people, himself included, because she was the closest living thing to them when they died.
Heather Chandler is the one who shows up most often. Mostly to patronize Veronica, which J.D. finds extremely infuriating. It’s not like he can try to kill her again, though.
Kurt and Ram show up at random. They don’t have anything meaningful to contribute.
J.D. does not show up.
Not to Veronica, but neither to the other ghosts eternally linked to her.
He remains invisible. He just observes.
Observes how Veronica has moved on.
Observes how he ruined her life, and yet she still moved on.
Goddamnit, that woman is remarkable.
And J.D. is the scum of the earth.
So for Veronica’s sake, and for his own, he chooses to stay hidden.
Because he knows she doesn’t deserve to be hurt by him again.
He only ever manifests physically when she sleeps. Not in an Edward Cullen ‘I like watching you sleep’ kind of way, but rather in a reflective way.
And he doesn’t actually watch her sleep. He just…chooses to stand nearby…if it tells him that she’s in the best place she can be now.
J.D. swore to himself that he wouldn’t intervene. She doesn’t need to see him again, hear his voice again. His presence alone is a reminder of the scars he left in her.
But god, he can’t dare to see her suffer like this.
Veronica is tossing and turning in her bed, constantly reaching for a sip of water, itching different parts of her body, failing to sleep. Her comforter has two blankets atop it to shield her from the cold (which was entirely his fault–J.D. doesn’t know why he makes the room so cold).
She’s shivering.
He can’t have that.
With some kind of magic he didn’t know he possessed, J.D. materializes a weighted blanket in his hands. He doesn’t question it; he drapes the blanket over the layers on Veronica’s bed. Almost immediately, her shaking and shivering stopped, and J.D. hears her breath smooth out.
He wishes this is who he could’ve been at seventeen.
But there’s nothing he can do about that now.
He can’t fix the past.
But maybe he can try to protect the future.